Mark Worden: Barrett,
Waters and Gilmour all grew up in Cambridge and this is simply a guide – with
maps and photos – to the town of their youth. There are entries on the 50 or so
locations: houses, schools, pubs, cafes, shops, concert venues, you name it. In
geographical terms, it starts at the centre of the famous university town and
works its way southwards. In terms of sources, obviously we used the books that
have been written about Pink Floyd, but we also conducted a number of interviews
with their contemporaries, some of whom even showed us the places in question.
Indeed special thanks go to Clive Welham, who played in David Gilmour's early
group Joker's Wild, and who still lives in Cambridge, and to the legendary album
cover designer, Storm Thorgerson: not only did he provide plenty of information
and encouragement, he also put us in touch with some of his contemporaries, who
in turn put us in touch with others and so on.

Heyou: Is there any
particularly curious fact that you discovered while researching the book?

Mark Worden: Well, a
favourite place would probably be the impressive house where the Ummagumma cover
was shot. This is not for the house or the cover, so much as the fact that it
was the scene of a surreal 21st birthday party in 1965 for which the line-up
included three unknown acts: namely, a bunch of architecture students living in
London who called themselves the Pink Floyd Sound, the afore-mentioned local
band Joker's Wild, and last, but by no means least, a young American guy who was
travelling round the UK at the time called Paul Simon. He went home shortly
after that and recorded a song called "The Sound of Silence" and the rest, as
they say, is history. None the less eye witnesses say that the evening was not a
great success but, when time travel becomes commercially viable, this will be an
event worth checking out. In more generic terms, our research involved a lot of
"legwork," i.e. walking around Cambridge and accosting innocent bystanders and
asking them for information. Two things struck us here: the first was how many
of the places from the 1950s and '60s have disappeared. The second was the
gradual realisation that we ourselves were a little eccentric. When you think
about it, going around a town in 2006 and asking people whether they can
remember the exact location of a place from the 1960s is like going round a town
in the 1980s and asking people whether they can remember a small local detail
from the Second World War. That said, just about everybody we spoke to was
polite and helpful, in a very English way.

Heyou: Where is the book
available?

Mark Worden: Selected
Cambridge bookshops, Amazon.com and eBay.

Heyou: Why Pink Floyd? How
did you "get to know" them?

Mark Worden: We were both
teenagers in the 1970s and Pink Floyd was a big part of that: we grew up to
their music. In my case, there was an added dimension: I grew up in the
Cambridge area and so a lot of these places were familiar. For example, I used
to go to concerts at the Corn Exchange, but I was a bit too young to attend the
disastrous Syd Barrett show there in 1972, which was probably just as well.

Heyou: Which is your
favourite Pink Floyd album and song?

Mark Worden: Without
wishing to appear unduly dull, the album has to be "Dark Side of the Moon,"
which really is part of "the soundtrack of our lives." Not only that, it still
sounds great – three decades and three thousand listenings later! In terms of a
song, I'm going to go for Grantchester Meadows, which is a wonderfully nostalgic
piece about growing up in Cambridge.

Heyou: Can you tell us
about what you're working on at the moment?

Mark Worden: We both have
several projects that we'd like to pursue, including a "work in progress" that
we'd let slip while we completed the book. It's a series of interviews with
people who reminisce about the 1960s. We freely admit that it probably isn't the
most original of ideas, but it's great fun to work on and that's the main thing.